‘No one from CBC helped us. They were too busy lodging FIR against residents’

As if the higher tax-paying residents of the upmarket Clifton and Defence Housing Authority (DHA) neighbourhoods haven’t already been struggling with the devastating effects of severe urban flooding caused by last week’s torrential rains, now they’ll also have to fight a legal battle with the Cantonment Board Clifton (CBC), which has slapped them with a criminal case over the protest they held to demand the water’s drainage.

The residents of Clifton and DHA had held a large protest outside the CBC office in DHA Phase-VI on Monday afternoon against the miserable failure of the cantonment board authorities in draining the rainwater that has accumulated in their houses, streets and neighbourhoods over the past week.

Up to 35 protesters have been accused of vandalism, spreading fear and using offensive language against government institutions, while the names of 22 of them have been mentioned in the FIR by the CBC.

The FIR has been registered on the complaint of a CBC official against those who had held a protest over the non-provision of amenities and the slackness in removing rainwater from the roads within their respective localities despite the passage of almost a week since the latest spell of heavy monsoon rains in Karachi.

The height of the CBC’s lack of empathy can be gauged from the fact that even eight days after the unprecedented downpour, several DHA residents are still in a miserable state because rainwater mixed with sewage is yet to be drained from many homes, while the supply of electricity has also not been restored.

Fouzia, resident of the Khayaban-e-Muhafiz area in DHA Phase-VI, said: “We don’t have power since eight days. Our basement and ground floor is still flooded. We are in a miserable state.”

She said the CBC have been telling them that there’s no proper rainwater drainage system in the area, so they’ve been using gutters to drain the water.

“They also seem helpless. They say they pump in the accumulated water in huge tankers and flush it out into the sea, but still the water level in the residential and commercial areas doesn’t appear to be decreasing.”

When asked about their loss, she said: “There’s no compensation for mental torture.” She said the residents are spending hefty sums on petrol these days because they’ve been deprived of electricity for eight days straight. Architect Nasima Saidol, who lives in a 20-year-old house in the same locality, had to spend Rs10,000 on draining the water from her basement.

“No one from the CBC helped us. They were too busy lodging an FIR against the residents.” She said that repeated carpeting of roads have raised the level of the roads higher than that of the houses and the drains in the area. She stressed that construction needs to be done according to a system.

“Those roads and areas that are now downward have become catchment areas in DHA,” she pointed out, and asked the cantonment authorities not to mess with the urban fabric. Her expensive furniture, including her dining table and sofas, as well as carpets, cabinets and curtains have rotted. All of her family’s things stored in her basement have been destroyed.

She lamented that after the flooding, every shop was closed, the internet wasn’t working and they had no power for a week. “The DHA is in a severely messy situation.” Musician and lawyer Ahmed Zawar is looking at a loss of roughly Rs1 million because his basement music studio in the Shahbaz Commercial area in DHA Phase-VI was completely flooded.

He said that adjacent to his studio is an empty plot where the garbage of the entire commercial area is dumped. He lamented that despite several complaints to the DHA and the CBC, no one paid any heed.

After the heavy rain on August 27, he couldn’t enter the area until two days later. When he sought the CBC’s help, he was told by the guards that all the officials were on leave. “We had no option but to drain the water manually through buckets,” he said, adding that there were two types of losses in his studio: firstly, all the electronic equipment that had mostly been destroyed, and secondly, the wooden interior of the studio had rotted.

After all these loses, when the CBC lodged an FIR against the protesters, it showed how much disconnected they were, he added. “They made a mockery of themselves.” Defence Society Residents Association President Sharafuddin Memon, who had also participated in the protest, said their association had asked the CBC to withdraw their FIR, but they were yet to respond. No official of the CBC was available for a comment.

Meeting’s minutes

According to the minutes of the meeting held between CBC officials and DHA residents on September 2, the stagnant water will be immediately removed from the roads and proper storm water drains will be constructed.

Supply of clean water in the pipelines will also be ensured, proper sewage and effluent disposal system will be regularly maintained and cleaned, and all the damaged roads will be immediately repaired, while it will be explained why the newly constructed roads are rapidly damaged.

Surveillance cameras will be installed all over DHA, while an oversight committee of civilian residents will be formed to have a meeting every two weeks with the CBC’s CEO and his team.

CBC’s history

The CBC, according to the information available on its website, was brought into existence through a notification dated February 27, 1983 to provide municipal cover to eight DHA phases, together with 13 slum settlements located in the periphery and Clifton’s blocks 8 and 9.

“It is spread over an area of 51.327 square kilometres, with a swelling population of 0.5 million at present. The Karachi Cantonment is on its north and west, towards the east lies the City District Government Karachi and towards the southern parameter stretches the Arabian Sea.” The DHA had constructed the area and handed it over to the CBC for municipal affairs and tax collection.

DHA’s tweets

The DHA tweeted that the storm water drain was constructed in 2007 with planning, considering the past 100 years of precipitation record of Karachi. They gave the example of 207 mm of rain being recorded in 24 hours during 1977.

“Much before the onset of the ongoing monsoon season, complete desilting and cleaning of drain was carried out. Perhaps nature had a greater challenge for us, as against out sustenance capacity of 207 mm rain in 24 hours, the current spell was 235 mm in 12 hours (more than double).”

They said they didn’t absolve themselves of their obligation towards mitigating the woes of the residents. “We have also approached and taken on board the real stakeholders, the DHA dwellers, through all the resident associations of DHA.”

They said that all of the DHA and the CBC with all their available resources as well as with the support of the provincial and federal departments are working round the clock to bring life back to normal.

To this, Architect Arif Belgaumi said the drains were not desilted in time. “They were already full of water,” he said, adding that in many cases, the drains couldn’t discharge because the outfall drain has a higher level. “That’s what’s happening now; we are waiting for the water level to go down.”

Environmentalist Saquib Ejaz said that it’s high time that their planners should consider the extremes in weather patterns and implement climate resilient infrastructure for Karachi. The residents of DHA, according to an official of the CBC, roughly pay Rs40,000 tax a year on an average. CBC spokesman Amir Abdur Arab couldn’t be contacted despite repeated attempts.

Law and order

Police have identified as many as 10 protesters who had disrupted law and order, and incited people to attack the CBC office, adds our correspondent. “We have so far traced and identified 10 protesters who were themselves attacking the CBC office and were also provoking other protesters,” said South Zone DIG Javed Akbar Riaz.

“Some of the violent protesters have already obtained bail, while raids for arresting other violent protesters who have been identified are likely to be carried out during the night.” Replying to a question, DIG Riaz said the residents also held a protest on Thursday, but the police neither arrested anyone nor registered an FIR because “the protest was peaceful as compared to the last one, during which a group of people even thrashed security guards and police officials”. “If someone [a resident] wants to register a case, we’ll do it, if a criminal act has taken place, otherwise the residents can approach the court to claim damages.”